Mandarin Chinese
The Chinese language (汉语/漢語 Hànyǔ; 华语/華語 Huáyǔ; 中文 Zhōngwén) is a language or language family consisting of varietieswhich are mutually intelligible to varying degrees.[4] Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages. About one-fifth of the world's population, or over one billion people, speaks some variety of Chinese as their native language. Internal divisions of Chinese are usually perceived by their native speakers as dialects of a single Chinese language, rather than separate languages, although this identification is considered inappropriate by some linguists andsinologists.[5] Chinese is distinguished by its high level of internal diversity, although all varieties of Chinese are tonal and analytic. There are between 7 and 13 main regional groups of Chinese (depending on classification scheme), of which the most spoken, by far, is Mandarin (about 850 million), followed by Wu (90 million), Cantonese (Yue) (70 million) and Min (50 million). Most of these groups are mutually unintelligible, although some, like Xiang and the Southwest Mandarin dialects, may share common terms and some degree of intelligibility. Standard Chinese (Putonghua / Guoyu / Huayu) is a standardized form of spoken Chinese based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin Chinese, referred to as 官话/官話''Guānhuà'' or 北方话/北方話''Běifānghuà'' in Chinese. Mandarin Chinese history can be dated back to the 19th century, particularly by the upper classes and ministers in Beijing.[6] Standard Chinese is the official language of the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China (ROC, also known as Taiwan), as well as one of four official languages of Singapore. It is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Of the other varieties of Chinese, Cantonese is influential in Guangdong Province and Cantonese-speaking overseas communities, and remains one of the official languages of Hong Kong (together with English) and ofMacau (together with Portuguese). Min Nan, part of the Min language group, is widely spoken in southern Fujian, in neighbouring Taiwan (where it is known as Taiwanese or Hoklo) and in Southeast Asia (known as Hokkien in Philippines, Singapore and Malaysia). There are also sizeable Hakka and Shanghainese diaspora, for example in Taiwan, where most Hakka communities maintain diglossia by being conversant in Taiwanese and Standard Chinese. '/Int/ QQ Group' /Int/ now has its very own Chinese Learning Group on QQ. The group number is 62033003. Everyone's welcome, so if you're studying Chinese or are a native speaker feel free to join! Resources 'Rosetta Stone' *3 levels available. *Recommended as a beginning tool *'Strongly not recommended to be used as the only tool.' *Covers pronounciation, reading, listening, vocabulary, writing. *Very poor for grammar. *Easy to use. Shouldn't take more than an hour to set up and begin using. *More expensive than it's worth. Thank you based internet! 'Pimsleur ' *A lot of lessons. *Recommended as a learning tool. *'Strongly not recomended to be used as the only tool.' *Covers mainly speaking and being able to hold a conversation. *Easy to use, just open the audio file and repeat. *Much more expensive than it's worth. Thank you based internet! 'Duolingo' *Planned, but with no estimation of when it will be released. 'Books and PDF files' *Best online Mandarin dictionary; it even includes a "conversation of the day", Android and iPhone apps AND a tool to write out a character. *Skritter - Awesome tool for learning how to write the Characters *Download Pleco , it's the handiest and best dictionary for your phone, no contest. *New Practical Chinese Reader. We use this series of books in university. They're not perfect, but they give you a pretty nice and gentle introduction to the language, have plenty of English and pinyin early on to help you along, and some good vocab. There's a Workbook as well that I'd advise getting. Get the DVD if you want, but the videos are mostly on youtube (e.g. here. Haven't watched them myself, so I'm not 100% sure if they're the right ones, but it should be obvious pretty quickly). *If you're using something like Pleco, which has a flashcard support, in conjunction with NPCR check out HSK Flashcards. It has downloadable flashcards (you open the links then save the page as a .txt file, and there's an option to 'Import Flashcards' on Pleco), primarily for HSK (the standard Chinese Proficiency exam), but also for every NPCR book. Very very handy, as flashcards are possibly the quickest and best way to learn characters. *Sinosplice has some reviews on various Mandarin-Learning books, so have a hunt around for ones that seem useful (he reviews some on learning Shanghainese too, for more advanced students who feel like learning it. Bear in mind his info about where to get them in Shanghai might be a little outdated, but when I was there in 2011-2012, the foreign bookshop on Fuzhou Lu still had 外国人学上海话, which is fine except for the lack of tones. Not all that sure about the others, but check it out anyway). *Common Chinese Patterns 330- Insanely useful book. you can pick it up online, or in the aforementioned Fuzhou Lu shop in Shanghai. It has an absolute ton of Chinese grammar structures in alphabetical order with uber-simple examples to help you learn them quickly. This is a must-buy if you're trying to learn grammar (NPCR, in my experience, isn't quite as clear on grammar points, so it helps to have this) 'News' *Xinhuanet The official Chinese state news agency. Lots of dense, dull news articles, but great for learning difficult vocabulary and the Chinese names of non-Chinese people/places. *Epoch Times An interesting, opposing view to Xinhua. Founded by the Falun Gong, uses traditional characters. *BBC Chinese service Simplified character version. 'Movies and TV' TV ' *Phoenix CNE Chinese-language channel, primarily showing news and current affairs shows. Not incredibly interesting, but excellent for aural practise. They tend to use Traditional characters, though. If you have Sky Digital, I think it's channel 785 (it's in the International section) 'Subtitles *Subscene *Findsubtitles *Shooter.cn 'Movies' *Street Angel (1937) on TPB *Spring in a Small Town/小城之春 (1954) *Raise the Red Lantern (1991) *Farewell, My Concubine (1993) *To Live (1994) *Shanghai Triads (1995) *Happy Times (2000) *Hero (2002) *Roots and Branches/我的兄弟姐妹 (2003) *House of Flying Daggers (2005) *Lust, Caution (2007) *Mulan (2009) *Monga 艋舺 (2010) 'Video Games' *Half-Life 2 (select 'simplified chinese' in it's options in steam) 'Music' *Jay Chou 周吉伦 *The Flowers 花儿乐队 *Jordan Chen 陈小春 *Nicholas Tse * Tanya Chua 蔡健雅 * MC Hotdog 熱狗 'Brotips' *Sometimes, not always but isn't rare, a character composed of two different parts (radicals) will give a hint in both the meaning and the pronounciation. For example, the character for mom is 媽 and is pronounced Ma1. The first radical, 女, means woman. The second one, 馬, means horse, but it's pronounced Ma3. *The more you know Mandarin, the less you have to rely on dictionaries to continue with your studies; exactly the opposite of English. The most difficult part of it are the four tones, which can be mastered with perseverance and practice. After that, everything is easier. Mandarin practically has no grammar. Most words are monosyllable, and those that aren't are mostly compound words, so they are very easy to remember. Once you know 300 characters plus the radicals, learning the rest is like playing a game. *I disagree with the brotip above. It is a common misconception that Mandarin "has no grammar;" as mentioned above in the link, Mandarin is a highly analytic language, meaning syntax (word order) is extremely, EXTREMELY important! You can get by with crappy syntax in the beginning, but once you move past topics like ordering food and introducing yourself and need to use sentences that would have long clauses in English, it's essential. While English and Mandarin both have a set of little rules (like -ed for making past tense, or -ly for adverbs), Mandarin also has grammar patterns, such as 把-structure, 是...的, and 所vb.的, that are used often in daily conversation. tl;dr Mandarin actually does have grammar, it's important, but it's easily memorized. *If you progress far in Mandarin, you will encounter three basic sets of grammar rules. First and most common is spoken grammar, which is the least formal and nearly always learned first. Second is "literary" or written (书面语) grammar; think of the difference between daily conversation and an academic paper in English. Third, is ancient Chinese (文言文） grammar , which, despite what you may hear, you WILL run into frequently if you read any serious Chinese literature or talk to college educated folks. （The old jokes about "Confucius say..." are based on reality after all.) *Learn tone sandhi, a fancy term for how tones change when in sequence. *Tones are very, very subtle in ordinary speech between natives. If you did not grow up hearing them, you'll likely never quite develop the same senstivity a native speaker has for them. This guy says that "only some tones are pronounced" and that you don't really need to pronounce them all, but this is untrue. OVEREMPHASIZE IN THE BEGINNING!! I can't stress this enough. Yes, you will sound silly. Yes, you will be laughed at a bit. Are you worried about looking cool, or do you want to fucking learn Chinese? If you can't speak fast because the tones are too hard, then you shouldn't be speaking that fast yet. Chinese is really hard, so remember that patience is key! Your tones will become subtler and more relaxed as you get more comfortable with them. *I know tones have been harped on here, but keep in mind a difference in tone in Chinese is like a difference in consonants in English (e.g. bat vs. cat, or cat vs. cab), so you can't ignore them if you want to be understood. *Get a language partner. I really cannot emphasise this enough. You can only learn so much out of a book, you need to actually interact with and speak with Chinese people. Chinese men have a habit of being shy and not very open, i.e. not great for oral practise, so if at all possible try and get a female language partner. The idea is that you meet up for coffee or whatever- she helps you with Chinese, and you help her with English. *Remember Flashman's advice: The best way to learn any language is in bed with a woman. Get a Chinese girlfriend. From what I've seen, Flashman was right- the guys in my class who managed to get Chinese gfs were the guys who progressed the quickest, not least because they actually had a practical reason to learn the language well. *The most effective way for most people to learn characters is by using flashcards. Write the character on one side, and the English and pinyin on the other. Remember to study them forwards and backwards! Alternatively, just download Pleco and use the built-in flashcard software (its included in the Android version, but for Iphone I think you have to buy it). Then, any time you have a few minutes spare, quickly test yourself on cards. Do it regularly (it takes like 2-5 mins tops) and the characters will begin to stick in your mind 'Other' *Pleco Absolutely essential kit for a Mandarin student. It's an incredibly handy (not to mention free) dictionary for your phone, and even includes flashcard software and OCR (optical recognition softare, i.e. you point your camera at some characters and it tells you what they mean), not mention example sentences for most words, phrases and idioms. This will save you buying a pocket translator in China, or trawling through a massive "pocket" dictionary the whole time. GET THIS BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING! *Chinese Grammar Wiki- speaks for itself. An exceptionally useful site *Uz-translations (a very useful website that you should definitely check out) *Nciku I can't believe nobody's added this, wow. This is the best Chinese dictionary ever made. It's pretty comprehensive and includes thousands (millions?) of example sentences. You can also use your mouse to write a character and search for it. *Zhongwen Mostly superseded by Nciku, but still has a cool feature where you can see trees of Chinese characters based on radical. *Chinese Hacks Essential viewing- this site has loads of info on idioms, technology resources (e.g. using OCR with Pleco), vocab etc. Bookmark this. *Danwei's Model Workers 2012 A roundup of the best China-related blogs and websites out there atm. Again, bookmark this. *Perapera: Tooltip translation addon similar to Rikaichan (Japanese) for Mozilla Firefox, that supports Chinese. Hover over Chinese text to display Hanyu Pinyin, English translations, and Simplified/Traditional variants. *China Smack Translations of stuff trending on Chinese internet, with the original text as well. Handy for swear words, Chinese memes etc. *China Hush Same sort of thing as China Smack, includes lots of stuff that doesn't get into the Chinese media *Mop One of the largest Chinese internet forums, good for learning netspeak and learning how younger people talk. *Phonemica A really interesting project started by some westerners where they recorded (and generally attempted to transcribe) examples of various Chinese dialects, as spoken by locals. Definitely worth a look to see the variety of languages that we tend to refer to as 'Chinese'. *Ctext An online collection of ancient Chinese texts with a (mediocre) translation helper. Uber-sinophiles only. *Gaoxiaoo.com A website like 9fag, but with Chinese memes and jokes. Mildly amusing, fun to figure out. *Tudou The Chinese Youtube. Has lots of Chinese TV shows, Chinese movies, and dubbed Western movies availble for free, though the website quality isn't great and the site is sometimes slow. *HorseDragonFish A website of short comics related to Mandarin learning. Absolutely superb for vocab, and fun to read as well. Make sure you don't miss the Chinese Superman section as well, he's hiding somewhere on the page... *Hacking Chinese Not to be confused with Chinese Hacks, this is a really great site with tons of articles on aspects of Chinese learning. *Memrise.com A great, free website for learning characters with the aid of user submitted mnemonics. Most of the courses teach characters in stages (such as teaching you "土 - Earth" and "田 - Field" before teaching you "里 - Inside", which is made up of "土" and "田"), so a lot of the vocabulary that you learn might not be particularly useful, but it's a nice, thorough system. Category:East asian Category:Chinese writting system Category:Group of dialects Category:Tonal Category:God tier Category:SVO Category:Useful